Video: Correcting white balance with a color checker

One of the ways that you can expedite your overall white balance and color correction workflow is by including something neutral in one of your initial frames. In other words, you can include something like this colorchecker passport, or maybe a gray card, or some sort of a colorchecker card which has some neutral qualities to it. In this case, I objectively know that there are few patches here on the right-hand side of this chart which are neutral. I can sample or select those in order to objectively white balance this image.

In this installment of the Photoshop Lightroom 4 Essentials series, author and teacher Chris Orwig guides photographers through the process of improving images with creative color, sharpening, and other effects in the Lightroom Develop module. The course covers each of the tools and features in the Develop module, and shows how to perform basic adjustments, such as exposure enhancement; how to improve image quality through noise reduction and clarity adjustments; how to apply creative effects, such as split toning and vignettes; and how to perform advanced tasks, such as correcting for lens distortion. Exercise files are included with the course.

Correcting white balance with a color checker

One of the ways that you can expedite your overall white balance and colorcorrection workflow is by including something neutral in one of your initial frames.In other words, you can include something like this colorchecker passport,or maybe a gray card, or some sort of a colorchecker card which has someneutral qualities to it.In this case, I objectively know that there are few patches here on theright-hand side of this chart which are neutral.I can sample or select those in order to objectively white balance this image.

Then I can apply that white balance to the other photographs which are capturedin this same lighting situation.Now this strategy works really well when you're shooting in the studio, oreven if you're shooting outdoors.Let's say you are shooting in open shade light, well again, in the initial frame,have a colorchecker chart, white balance it, and apply it to the other imageswhich were also captured in open shade.All right. Well let's take a look at how we can do this; it's really simple.We choose the White Balance tool, and then we will go ahead and hover overthis little color chip here that we know should be neutral, and we will click on that.

That will then color correct that chip.The next step, of course, will be to select the other photographs that wewant to white balance.Click on your first one, hold down the Shift key, click on the last image, andthen at the base of the Basic panel over here, or the panels on the right, Ishould say, you will see there's a Sync button. It says Sync...Whenever you see dots in Lightroom, it tells you, if you click on this, you'reabout to see a menu.Here, we can synchronize settings.We can choose Check All to apply all of the different settings we have inside ofthe Basic panels, and the panels on the right, or we can check None, and thenjust determine one option.

In this case, all we need is White Balance, right?So we will check on that option there, and then click Synchronize.This will then white balance all three of these images, so that they're nowall color correct, and have the same exact temperature, and tint, and color white balance.What's great about this is it just takes out so much of the guesswork.Typically, this is all that you'll need to do in order to color correct your images.Yet, I don't want to stop there, and I don't want to stop there because sometimeswhat you want is objective color.

Other times, you may want to tweak it just a little bit.In order to tweak the color, in order to make a subjective change, you can usethese Temperature and Tint sliders, and just drag and change them.For example, I'm going to take my Temperature slider down a little bit.This is going to make the image a bit more cool.Let's say for this shoot, rather than having it neutral, I want it just a littlebit cooler than neutral.Well, again, I can determine what that is here, and I can set that up in this way.Now, I do have to point out that this can be a little bit of a slippery slope,because when you're making those subjective adjustments, it really depends onhow well your monitor is calibrated; how well you can see that color.

Yet, that being said, there still will be times where you will want to make thoseadjustments, and you can use those sliders in order to make adjustments tocorrect, or to even modify the color in your photographs.Why I point all of this out is because sometimes, you know, neutral color isn'tnecessarily the best color.Sometimes, as we've talked about before, you may be embracing having a little bitof a warmer tone, or maybe a little bit of a cooler tone.And again, that's part of the art of photography, the art of scene, the art ofworking on your images, and I just need to highlight that here to point out thatyou can make those adjustments on your own, working with these sliders.

All right. Well, that being said, typically what you'll do is just sample the point on thecard, and then apply that to other images, and you'll be good to go. Yet again, Ijust want to point out kind of this whole process, so that you have all of thisinformation, and all of these techniques, so that you can arrive at the bestcolor correction for your photographs.

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Learn by watching, listening, and doing, Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along Premium memberships include access to all exercise files in the library.

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Learn by watching, listening, and doing! Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along. Exercise files are available with all Premium memberships.
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